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Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Relevant Alternatives and Subjunctivism

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Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Relevant Alternatives and Subjunctivism Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Relevant Alternatives and Subjunctivism. A Summary? Wesley H. Holliday University of California, Berkeley [email protected] Abstract. I summarize the formal framework and some of the main formal results in my “Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Rele- vant Alternatives and Subjunctivism” (Journal of Philosophical Logic), adding a few methodological comments on formalization in philosophy. Some topics in philosophy seem to cry out for formal analysis. The topic of epistemic closure in epistemology strikes me as a prime example. Its very name invokes the mathematical idea of a set being closed under a relation. In one of its simplest forms, the question is whether the set of propositions known by an ideal logician Lmustbeclosedundertherelationoflogical consequence from multiple premises: if P1,...,Pn are in the set of propositions known by L, and P is a logical consequence of P ,...,P (in which case L has at least n+1 { 1 n} deduced and come to believe Pn+1), must Pn+1 be in the set of propositions known by L? Epistemic closure questions like this have lead to “one of the most significant disputes in epistemology over the last forty years” [Kvanvig, 2006, 256], as different philosophical theories of knowledge give different answers. Some theories support full closure, while others only support weaker closure principles. One of the goals of my “Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I: Relevant Alternatives and Subjunctivism” (Holliday 2013b, hereafter ‘EC&ELI’) was to determine exactly the extent of epistemic closure according to a family of stan- dard theories of knowledge. The theories at the center of the closure debate, ver- sions of the relevant alternatives (RA) and subjunctivist theories of knowledge, are often presented in a kind of modal picture, distinguishing relevant epistemic alternatives or close counterfactual possibilities from the rest of logical space. Thus, it seemed that a natural way to study the properties of these theories was to formalize them with some kind of models for epistemic modal logic. This was the path followed in EC&ELI, which I will sketch in this summary. In my view, an application of formal methods in philosophy gains value if: (1) it is faithful to the philosophical views being formalized; (2) it can handle concrete examples discussed in the philosophical literature; (3) it goes beyond particular examples to provide a systematic and general view of the topic; ? Published in Logic Across the University: Foundations and Applications (College Publications), eds. Johan van Benthem and Fenrong Liu, 23-31. 2WesleyH.Holliday (4) it leads to philosophically-relevant discoveries that would be difficult to make by non-formal methods alone. Points (1) and (2) address the worry that by formalizing we may “change the subject.” Points (3) and (4) address the question, “What do we get out of this?” Of course, there are other features that contribute to the value of an application of formal methods, as well as features that detract from it. Here I will explain the ways in which I think EC&ELI satisfies the four desiderata above. EC&ELI proposes formalizations of the RA theories of Lewis [1996] and Heller [1989, 1999]; one way of developing the RA theory of Dretske [1981], based on Heller; and basic versions of the “subjunctivist” tracking theory of Noz- ick [1981] and safety theory of Sosa [1999]. To formalize the theories of Lewis and (one way of developing) Dretske, I introduce RA models, defined below. Tra- ditional semantics for epistemic logic represent knowledge by the elimination of possibilities, but without any explicit distinction between those relevant possi- bilities that an agent must rule out in order to have knowledge vs. those remote, far-fetched or otherwise irrelevant possibilities that can be properly ignored. RA models make this distinction explicit by adding relevance orderings. Definition 1. A relevant alternatives (RA) model is a tuple = W, , ,V M h i where W, ,V is an ordinary relational model, with at least reflexive, and h i assigns to each w W a preorder (reflexive and transitive) on some W 2 w _ w ✓ W , for which w is a minimal element. Let u v iff u v and not v u, _ ≺w _w w and define Min (S)= v S Ww there is no u S such that u w v . w { 2 \ | 2 ≺ } Intuitively, w v means that v is an uneliminated epistemic alternative for the agent in w; u v means that u is a more relevant alternative at w than v is; ≺w and Min (S) is the set of most relevant alternatives in S at w.Forsimplicity, w _ assume that each w is well-founded: S Ww = implies Min (S) = . (The \ 6 ; w 6 ; main results also hold with more general definitions without well-foundedness.) Now we can define three semantics for the basic epistemic language with formulas ' ::= p ' (' ') K': C-semantics for Cartesian, D-semantics for |¬ | ^ | (one way of developing) Dretske [1981], and L-semantics for Lewis [1996]. Definition 2. Given a well-founded RA model = W, , ,V with w W M h i 2 and a formula ',define ,w ' and ' M = v W ,v ' as follows M ✏x x { 2 |M ✏x } (with propositional cases as usual): _ J K ,w K' iff v ' M : w v; M ✏c 8 2 c 6 M ,w ✏d K' iff v Min w ' d : w v; M 8 2 J K _ 6 M ,w ✏l K' iff v Min w (W ) ' l : w v, M 8 2 J K \ _ 6 where P = v W v P . In C-semantics, for an agent to know ' in world w, { 2 | 62 } J K _ all of the '-possibilities must be eliminated by the agent in w. In D-semantics, ¬ for any ' there is a set Min ' M of most relevant (at w) '-possibilities w d ¬ that the agent must eliminate in order to know '.Finally,inL-semantics,there J K Epistemic Closure and Epistemic Logic I. A Summary 3 is a set of relevant possibilities, Min (W ),suchthatforany',inorderto w know ' the agent must eliminate the '-possibilities within that set. ¬ Observe that for D-semantics, the whole relevance ordering matters. As w Heller puts it, there are “worlds surrounding the actual world ordered according to how realistic they are, so that those worlds that are more realistic are closer to the actual world than the less realistic ones” [1989, 25] with “those that are too far away from the actual world being irrelevant” [1999, 199], where how far is “too far” depends on the ' in question. By contrast, L-semantics does not use the ordering of more or less relevant worlds beyond the set Min (W ),taken w to represent Lewis’s single set of relevant alternatives in the current context (for aformaltreatmentofthedynamicsofcontext change,seeHolliday2012a). To formalize the RA theory of Heller [1989, 1999], the basic tracking theory of Nozick [1981], and the basic safety theory of Sosa [1999], I introduce CB models: Definition 3. A counterfactual belief (CB) model is a tuple = W, D, ,V M h 6 i where W , ,andV are defined like W , ,andV in Definition 1, and D is a 6 serial binary relation on W . D is a doxastic accessibility relation, so that wDv means that everything the agent believes in w is true in v.TomakethetruthclausesforK clearer, I add abeliefoperatorB for the D relation; but the main results will be stated for the epistemic language without B. The preorders 6w can be thought of either as relevance orderings, as before, or as similarity orderings as in Lewis’s [1973] semantics for counterfactuals. With this setup, we can define three more seman- tics, formalizing three “subjunctivist” views of knowledge: H-semantics for Heller [1999], N-semantics for Nozick [1981], and S-semantics for Sosa [1999]. There are a number of qualifications to be made here, but I will mention only three, re- ferring to the full paper for the rest. First, in EC&ELI,Ionlytreatthebasic versions of the tracking and safety theory (for the versions with “methods” and “bases” of belief, see Holliday 2012b, §2.D). Second, Heller and Sosa only propose necessary conditions for knowledge, so they may wish to take K here to repre- sent sensitive belief or safe belief, rather than knowledge. Third, I interpret the sensitivity, adherence, and safety conditions along Lewisian counterfactual lines, which is common in the literature, but not the only conceivable interpretation. Definition 4. Given a well-founded CB model = W, D, ,V with w W M h 6 i 2 and formula ',define ,w ' and ' M = v W ,v ' as follows: M ✏x x { 2 |M ✏x } ,w ✏x B' iff v W : if wDv then ,v ✏x '; M 8 2 J K M ,w K' iff ,w B' and M ✏h M ✏h M (sensitivity) v Min w ' : ,v 2h B'; 8 2 6 h M ,w n K' iff ,w n B' and M ✏ M ✏ J KM (sensitivity) v Min w ' : ,v 2n B',and 8 2 6 n M (adherence) v Min6w ' nM : ,v ✏n B'; 8 2 J K M ,w s K' iff ,w s B' and M ✏ M ✏ (safety) v Min B'JMK : ,v '. 8 2 6w s M ✏s J K 4WesleyH.Holliday In H-semantics, an agent knows ' iffshe believes ' in the actual world but not in any of the “closest” (most similar or relevant) '-worlds. This condition implies ¬ both that ' is true in the actual world and, according to Lewis’s semantics for counterfactuals, that if ' were false, the agent would not believe ';inthis sense, her belief is “sensitive” to the truth of '.
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